All content tagged: Surveillance

Cops can do anything they want in modern America. This is from a 2015 Washington Post piece entitled "Cops took more stuff from people than burglars did last year." Notice the jump in seizures near the end of Obama's first term.

A brief history of books, resistance, the police and politicians. It is humanly impossible for even the most learned judge to have read every book referred to in their court. For a brief while this week, the judge conducting the trial of activist Vernon Gonsalves, an accused in the Bhima...

In a recent piece about the politicization of news concerning the Chinese telecom giant Huawei, some of our readers on made interesting comments that actually help one to connect the dots and see more clearly just how invasive the US government thinks it can be in terms of one’s personal...

Just like other government departments the Foreign & Commonwealth Office requires film and TV producers to sign contracts with them to provide production assistance. The agreement signed with the makers of Downton Abbey includes an interesting clause - they signed up to abide by the...

Despite its enormous popularity there are many problems with Breaking Bad - the utterly racist depiction of Mexicans, the glorifying of a sociopathic protagonist and that incredibly boring and pointless fifth season come to mind. But what has never been discussed before is how the show functions...

Superman is one of the world’s most recognisable cultural icons. A symbol of human idealism, he has been subject to a range of political and philosophical agendas over the last 80 years. This week I analyse the ideas behind Superman, and how they have manifested and changed throughout the course...

The Superman reboot Man of Steel launched the (now abandoned) DC Extended Universe, and put a much darker tinge on the Superman franchise than any previous incarnation, especially the Christopher Reeve classics. Man of Steel benefited from large-scale support from the military, but hidden until...

While it is now considered a Cold War classic Ice Station Zebra was a flop when it was first released. This week, I review Ice Station Zebra and analyse the development of the film, how it differs quite radically from the book, and why the DOD rejected an early version of the script, leading to a...

LONDON — Like the proverbial “shot heard round the world,” the U.K.’s arrest and imprisonment of publisher and journalist Julian Assange officially signaled the Western world’s war on a free press. The Australian who founded WikiLeaks, but stepped down as editor-in-chief last year, was ousted...

Detroit's Project Green Light is a massive surveillance-camera network with 1,000 cameras that spies on people at gas stations, retail stores, and in public housing. The city also is using cameras on street lights. New Orleans is considered to be the first Us city to follow the Chinese model...

Verizon announced that its 5G cell towers will be turned 'on' for the first time in the US in parts of two cities, Minneapolis and Chicago. Trump is pushing 5G with the justification that the US is in competition with China to be the first country to use 5G systems to monitor and control all...

Osama Bin Laden’s death is the perfect postmodern event, in that most of the reports detailing how, where and when he died contradict all the other reports. This week I take an in-depth look at the Abbottabad raid of 2011 and the official story of Bin Laden’s death, analyzing some of the myriad...

In late 2009 the FBI got wind of the fact that Martin Scorcese was developing The Wolf of Wall Street, about stock fraudster turned federal cooperator Jordan Belfort. So the Bureau's Michael Kortan wrote to Scorcese to offer their help and support in producing the film, noting that 'all...

The 1968 spy and counterspy classic Ice Station Zebra was inspired by a real life event during the CIA/Air Force Corona spy satellite program. In April 1959 the satellite Discoverer 2 became the first to send a recovery capsule containing satellite surveillance imagery back to earth, but there...

Public Enemies is a 2009 historical drama/thriller film that tells the story of the Bureau of Investigation’s manhunt for Public Enemy Number One John Dillinger. In this episode I examine the film, the politics of crime and the romanticising of criminals. I explore these themes in light of FBI...

INSURGE INTELLIGENCE — On Monday 4th, the New York Times reported that the National Security Agency has “quietly” shut down a controversial phone records surveillance program revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden in 2013.

You may remember that last year some nut was arrested for mailing bombs to prominent Democrats, media outlets, and opponents of Donald Trump. Less than a week after the bombs went out, a suspect was arrested. Almost immediately, video turned up of him at a Trump rally, wearing a “Make America...

The FBI recently released a tranche of documents on the USA Network TV series Burn Notice. While most of the file is redacted - in many cases every paragraph of every page - the small amount of unredacted information shows that the FBI and NSA are keeping tabs on how spies are portrayed on...

Anwar al Awlaki rose to notoriety in the 2000s as a leading internet jihadist whose lectures and videos were very popular among the emerging Islamist movement. But his history with Al Qaeda, and in particular his contacts with the 9/11 hijackers while under investigation by the FBI, pose serious...

Anwar Al Awlaki was the head of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula until his death in a CIA drone strike in 2011. In the mid-late 1990s he lived in San Diego, where he met future 9/11 hijackers Nawaf Al-Hazmi and Khalid Al Mihdhar and consorted with Saudi intelligence officer Omar Al-Bayoumi. But...

[Prefatory Note:The following post contains my responses to questions posed by Sputnik News Agency a few days ago. The effort to warn European countries not to use equipment from the Chinese telecom giant, Huawei, is part warning and part threat. It claims to be a matter of security, but seems...

The United Arab Emirates has been recruiting American former spies in order to monitor its own citizens, and according to an explosive new lengthy Reuters investigation, the Americans which include former NSA cybersecurity specialists were increasingly asked to “cross a red line” by spying on US...

The Five Eyes, a part of what the NSA calls internally its “global network,” have their dirty fingerprints all over the latest spying scandal engulfing New Zealand, writes exiled Kiwi journalist and activist Suzie Dawson. NZ Spy Scandal: Elephants In The Room;…

In my final review of The Wire I discuss how the core theme of season 5 – truth – plays out across several storylines. From fake news to McNulty’s fictional serial killer to the Clay Davis trial, I talk about how the abusive institutions that make up a city’s control mechanisms encourage and...

In this penultimate review episode I look at how the education system is a poor place to learn anything, how standardised testing is a form of child abuse, the fundamental problems of electoral politics, and expand on why an intelligence-based approach to societal problems is always better than a...

The NSO Group, an Israeli company, created software that covertly allows all cell-phone communications to be monitored, including texts, emails, and calls. It also can hijack a mobile phone’s microphone and camera to turn it into a surveillance device.

In part 3 of this subcriber-only review series I look at season three of The Wire. In this season the Barksdale storyline comes to a climax, while the city hall politics are added into the ever-expanding world of the show. I examine the Hamsterdam experiment, where one police major decides to...

In the second of my subscriber-only reviews of The Wire I look at season 2. Focusing on smuggling through the port of Baltimore this season explores how capitalism has evolved to a post-industrial phase dominated by service industries like sex and drugs, how investigating sex slavery is relegated...

This is part 1 of a new subscriber-only review series where I talk about The Wire. In this episode I discuss some of the recurring themes – the war on drugs, the failed police tactics, the dirty money trail – along with the complex metaphysics of the show. I talk about some of my favourite […]...

Sam Greenlee is perhaps most famous for writing the novel The Spook Who Sat By the Door, which was adapted into a film in the 1970s. Greenlee believed that the CIA and FBI suppressed the film because it portrayed them in such a bad light, and promoted black militancy. A recent response from the...

Social media and Google serve three strategic purposes for the U.S. government. First, they allow Washington to conduct espionage; second, they facilitate the spread of disinformation campaigns, and third, they serve as conduits for the transmission of...

TEL AVIV, ISRAEL — Edward Snowden, the former U.S. government contractor who leaked classified information from the U.S.’ National Security Agency (NSA) in 2013, will be speaking at an upcoming conference in Israel via video stream on November 6. The event, which is being hosted by Israeli media...

While Americans await the confirmation vote on another U.S. Supreme Court Justice nominee, Judge Brett Kavanaugh, the important question they should be asking themselves and their elected representatives is whether this nominee is the ‘constitutionalist’ they are looking for.

(ANTIMEDIA) — Following the presidential alert sent to millions of Americans’ phones on Wednesday, cybersecurity expert and former presidential candidate John McAfee tweeted a dire warning: The "Presidential alerts": they are capable of accessing the E911 chip in your phones – giving them full...

On Monday October 1st, Sacramento, Houston, Indianapolis and Los Angeles became the first cities to gain access to Verizon’s 5G Wireless service. The City of Sacramento has become a focus of Verizon’s nationwide expansion of 5G, or 5th Generation Cellular technology. “We were able to make...

Back in the heyday of the old Soviet Union, a phrase evolved to describe gullible western intellectuals who came to visit Russia and failed to notice the human and other costs of building a communist utopia. The phrase was “useful idiots” and it applied to a good many people who...

China's communist government is implementing a "social credit" scorecard in order to control more than a billion people. This is accomplished by surveillance using facial recognition, body scanning, and tracking. Smartphone apps monitor daily behavior. Anyone who is critical of the government...

It’s fitting that the same society that produced George Orwell with his warnings of a totalitarian dystopia stacked with all-prying monitors, surveillance and paranoia should yield up some of the most invasive surveillance regimes imaginable. While some states have found the revelations from...

Last week, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the U.K.’s GCHQ spy agency is in violation of the European Convention on Human Rights with its mass surveillance programs. The court ultimately found that these activities violate the family and privacy rights of British and European...

Journalists and free press advocates are responding with alarm to newly released documents revealing the U.S. government’s secret rules for using Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court orders to spy on reporters, calling the revelations “important” and “terrifying.”

(ANTIMEDIA) — Last week, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the U.K.’s GCHQ spy agency is in violation of the European Convention on Human Rights with its mass surveillance programs. The court ultimately found that these activities violate the family and privacy rights of British and...

Missing associates, appropriate process and West Virginia 'Fallout' + this day in history w/the arrest of Captain William Morgan and our song of the day by Tobacco on your Morning Monarchy for September 11, 2018.

Emails obtained by Lucy Parsons Labs reveal that Geofeedia touted social media surveillance of middle and high school students by its suburban Chicago police customers in an effort to sell their services to Evanston police.

Mark Felt is a 2017 biopic starring Liam Neeson as FBI Deputy Director Mark Felt, telling the story of his role in becoming a source for the Washington Post's reporting on Watergate. Following on from recent episodes on John Paisley and the Weather Underground, I offer a deconstructive view of...